Page 30 of Falling for Red
“I’d rather not assume.”
She rolls her eyes playfully and turns around, crawling into my lap until she’s straddling me. Her eyes narrow. “Is this your kink?”
“Is what my kink?” I ask, my hands squeezing her hips.
“Having me tell you what I want.”
“Maybe,” I whisper, taking out her ponytail and playing with her hair, brushing it behind her shoulders. “You should just tell me, so I’ll do it.”
“But then where’s the mystery?” Her eyes flicker with that same playful spark, and her lips are teasingly close to mine.
“Do you want mystery, or do you want to know exactly what’s going to happen?”
Claire bites her lip before kissing me. Leaning back, she asks, “How … Dom are you?”
“It depends. Everyone’s different, you know?” Claire’s lips tease my neck, and I pull her closer to me. “I like things to be playful, more than just control and submission.”
She squints at me, and I’m curious. I don’t get strong Sub vibes from her. Not that it really matters. But she’s definitely a brat.
“I won’t wear a collar,” she says, watching me carefully, like she’s setting a boundary.
“Oh, I’m not that hardcore.” I laugh, wrapping my hands around her wrist and placing them on my shoulders. “I’m interested in connection more than anything.”
She raises an eyebrow. “What else do you get up to?”
“Plenty,” I whisper and press my forehead to hers, and she laughs softly, bringing me into a kiss.
When she breaks our kiss, she sighs loudly. “Let’s be real. When this bubble of me not working and not having to be a mom pops … I don’t know what this will look like.”
I pull her in for a big hug. She wants this. She wants something more than a hookup. “It’ll look however you want it to,” I say softly into her hair, squeezing her.
She shakes her head slightly. “You might only get to see me one night a week at most.”
“Better than not seeing you at all.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You’re all in on this?”
“I’m all in,” I say, shrugging because I don’t know how to be any other way. I’ve never been able to date multiple people at once. “That’s how I roll.”
She looks thoughtful for a moment, then leans back, studying my face. “So, when was your last relationship?”
“There was a girl I dated for a couple of months, but … she wasn’t the one. So I broke it off.” Thinking back to it, I tried a lot of new things with her, but it affirmed that I want a more traditional relationship with a partner.
“You’re looking for ‘the one’?”
“Aren’t we all?” As I say it, I hope Claire is. I hope she could be ready for something serious because everything about our time together says this could work. But I’ll take whatever I can get from her in the meantime.
“I don’t know…” She sighs, glancing away. “I don’t know if ‘the one’ is a thing.”
I study her, trying to read the expression she’s not sharing with me. “Are you anti-marriage now that you’ve been there and done that?”
“Not anti, just … cautious.” She pauses, looking down. “Marriage is a business partnership. I used to see it like a fairytale, but now… I’d need to know everything if I ever went down that road again. Like, bank statements, credit scores—I won’t enter anything blind.”
I chuckle, appreciating the realness. “I have almost a perfect credit score. A mortgage well within my means. But cars … okay, cars are where I light a lot of money on fire, but it’s never more than I can afford.”
We fall quiet again, her still straddling me, and I know we’ve barely scratched the surface here. Rubbing my hands up and down her arms, I’m happy she’s letting me in, keeping her guard lowered. I know this might bring back the defenses, but we’re talking about all of this.
“Can I ask what your situation is with your ex … like financially?”
